


i don't want to be here if i can't be with you

by Kangoo



Series: Front toward enemy [11]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Razel-centric, Suicidal Thoughts, basically a long angsty monologue, but it's not happy, i don't know what this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-02-29 18:51:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18784102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo
Summary: He thinks maybe Awokens are bad at mourning, or maybe he is.





	i don't want to be here if i can't be with you

**Author's Note:**

> i finally played through 'ace in the hole' and needed to write something sad to purge it from my body so. here you go. sad razel.
> 
> title from sam smith's 'lay me down' (which i discovered through hozier's cover so it totally counts)

There are a lot of flowers on Cayde’s grave. Other things, too. Bullets, glimmers, cards. But mostly flowers. They’re piled over the casket, cascading down the sides, spilling onto the floor in a sea of colors.

Razel runs his hand through them. Watches the petals brush over his skin more than he feels them. The colors are dull to his eyes. The entire world is, now. Sunlight streams through the tall windows of the cemetery and can’t manage to warm him. Even now darkness crawls at the edge of his sight.

The room is empty. Silent. Too vast, yet too crowded. Hard to breathe in, from grief and the dust that can’t help but gather around graves.

“I got Ace back,” he says, a desperate bid to fill the emptiness. His voice is quiet, raspy from disuse. He hasn’t had the strength to face people, talk to people, for a while.

_Strong silent type_ , Cayde had called him. A joke on how quiet he used to be, in the first months; how loud he became, later on.

He takes his hand out of the flowers, drums his fingers on his knee. Cayde always waited for him to get his words in order when he’d ramble too fast, jumble them together. It’s weird that now, when Cayde can’t cut him off, is when he’d start to think before he talks.

“I don’t think I’m gonna be using it for much longer, though,” he settles on. Kind of guilty for admitting it, kind of relieved for the same reason. It hangs in the air between them — the grave and him. Heavy with unspoken meaning. _I don’t think I’m gonna be there for much longer,_ he doesn’t say, because Cayde would already know, if he was there. And if he isn’t then it doesn’t matter what he says or doesn’t say. “I’m glad it’s fixed, though. It’s wouldn’t have been right to leave it the way it was.”

Doesn’t feel right to have it now, held loose in his other hand. It has too much Cayde in it. He brushes his thumb against the spade painted on the side, thoughtful. He has half a mind to turn it on himself, if only to put and end to the stifling silence, but he refrains. Not that it would be effective, anyway, but it wouldn’t do anyone any good to get blood all over the place. And this isn’t the gun for the job. This is a gun for killing bad guy. For protecting people. For justice, and doing good, and kicking ass that isn’t his own.

He thinks maybe Awokens are bad at mourning, or maybe he is. First Uldren, then him, going half-mad with grief instead of moving forward. There’s too much Darkness in them to let it go, maybe. Or maybe it's a 'them' kind of problem. Too much time halfway into the Ascendant realm, or getting their mind twisted by the Vex. They get weird, and obsessed with resurrection, and when it doesn’t work—

When it’s not possible—

Well. Bad stuff happens. It always does.

But then again Uldren didn’t kill his sister.. And she wasn’t really dead, now, was she? Just… lost. Or maybe just too busy being incorporeal to bother telling him so. Maybe he’d have been fine, eventually, if the Black Garden hadn’t turned his brain inside-out. If he’d known.

Razel, now… Razel didn’t have a chance, and he didn’t have a choice. He killed Cayde — let him die — couldn’t save him. Same thing. He kind of thought he could repay a life for a life. Kill Uldren and wipe his slate clean. That didn’t work, so he focused on the Ace of Spade. A part of Cayde, brought back to life with new parts and old recordings.

He strokes the painted spade again, wondering—

(Could he have done better? Done more? Guns kill. He doesn’t think he can bring someone back to life with one. But maybe if he’d tried harder—)

“It’s weird how you sounded like you were ready for me to kill you. Like I _could_ kill you, even if I wanted to. Though I guess I kinda did, in the end,” he says. “You liked to be ready for everything. I remember that. But I never thought we’d end up there, you dead and me… not. It’s weird that _you_ thought about it. Even just in case.”

That kind of weird is typical, for Cayde. Unnerving, but he came to expect the paranoia. It was justified, in the end. Cayde really didn’t have anyone to watch his back but himself; the Vanguard gig really ended up being the death of him.

Kind of cursed, that position.

“I don’t want this story to end,” he admits after some time, really quiet. Letting the silence swallows it whole, spit it back out muted and broken. “I’m sorry. I know you’d want us all to move on, but-” he swallows past the lump in his throat, past the prickling in his eyes. “I still wake up every night, wishing Uldren had gotten me instead.”

_I still wake up every night with the weight of your body in my arms_ , he doesn’t say, because Cayde would know. He always knew, when it came to Razel.

Back then, under the Prison of Elders, he hadn’t felt anything. The grief had been like a tidal wave, crashing into him, drowning everything until there was nothing left. It had been awful, that all-consuming void opening in him, the static in his ears as he put one foot after the other, one foot after the other. Now he misses it. Longs for the quiet, the numbness, when he wakes up gasping — sobbing — shaking all over, nightmares a tangible mass lodged in his throat, weighing down on his chest, choking him.

Razel has never lost anyone before. Never _loved_ anyone before, not the way he loved Cayde — fiercely, wholeheartedly.

He clears his throat, wipes the tears off his cheeks. Puts on a brave front, for old time’s sake. “Ikora and Zavala are worried about me. Lek, too. Holliday, I think. Like if they stop watching me one second I’m gonna off myself?”

He thinks, again, about the gun in his lap. How easy it would be, to turn it on himself, turn it on Cubix. It only takes a bullet.

“I’d promise I won’t do it, but you taught me not to take losing bets.” He chuckles. It rings hollow. Cayde would hate it, he thinks. He wouldn’t see the point in Razel dying, not when it wouldn’t help anyone. But he’s not there. Why should it matter?

 

He rises to his feet. Rests his hand on Cayde’s casket, like he could feel a heartbeat if only he pressed hard enough. “I’ll try, though,” he says, and it’s not a lie. Not quite.

 

He leaves the Ace of Spade on top of the casket as he leaves. It’s not his gun to wield. It’s never been anyone’s but Cayde.

And who is he going to pass it on to, when he’s killed by a Vex? By a Fallen?

(By himself?)


End file.
